Catching them early
Even TIME is issuing Gender Instructions.
It’s only been a week since Katherine Locke’s newest book was published, and they’ve already received messages from parents of trans and nonbinary children saying how much it spoke to them.
The very first sentence, and already we see what a dog’s breakfast bespoke pronouns can create. Who is the first they? Who is the second? You’ll just have to guess!
The book, What Are Your Words?, tells the story of a kid named Ari, who is gender fluid and nonbinary and tries out different pronouns depending on how they feel on different days.
Why is this kid both gender fluid and nonbinary? And why is TIME repeating this nonsense with a straight face? Why are they telling us people have different pronouns depending on how they feel on different days?
Aimed at readers aged 4 to 8, the book follows Ari and his nonbinary uncle Lior as they try to figure out what words fit them.
How can uncle Lior be nonbinary when he’s an uncle? Or, to put it another way, how can uncle Lior be an uncle when he’s nonbinary? Also whoops TIME slipped up and said “Ari and his nonbinary uncle” – whoops whoops whoops ten years in the gulag for TIME.
With colorful illustrations by Anne Passchier, the book emphasizes that pronouns are one part of a full identity, as Ari introduces Lior to their neighbors and shares each person’s pronouns, occupation and adjectives to describe them. Locke was keen to highlight the bigger picture of people’s full humanity beyond gender identity as well as focus on Ari’s words and feelings about their words, rather than labeling their gender on the page.
Pronouns are not “part of a full identity,” whatever that is.
How are so many adults toppling for this childish blither when it took years and years for civil rights and feminism to get even a toehold in the mainstream?
These new releases, as well as Locke’s latest title, come amid a record year of anti-transgender legislation across the U.S., with 33 states introducing more than 100 bills largely targeted at rolling back the rights of trans youth.
That’s a lie.
TIME asks the author why now.
Locke: It felt like the right time to start having these conversations for a younger audience. I really wanted to tell it through a narrative with a character, versus something that was more teaching. I wanted to give kids the opportunity to see themselves in Ari, or to see Ari as a friend. I use they/them, I’m nonbinary. Anne Passchier, who is the illustrator, is also nonbinary and uses they/them, so it was a really personal project for the two of us. We’re really proud to be sharing our story with everybody.
Don’t be. Be embarrassed, instead.
She goes on:
I think that the growth of gender identity books for kids is really great. Kids are more likely to understand a wide spectrum of gender, whereas we as adults kind of lose that skill as we grow up.
No, that’s not what that is. It’s the other way around. Kids are new to the world, so they’re learning everything from scratch, so you can tell them any old bullshit. Adults have more cognitive tools for recognizing bullshit when we see it. We don’t lose a skill of believing whatever people tell us, we develop a skill of being cautious about what people tell us. “Nonbinary” Katherine Locke’s book is an effort to brainwash children.
It’s really important that we normalize asking about pronouns because some people pass, some people’s presentation may not match your idea of what their presentation is, may not match their gender identity and their pronouns. I have really long hair right now, and lots of people use she/her for me, but she/her are not my pronouns.
Oh get over yourself.
Misgendering is a really painful experience, and it’s hard to describe to people who haven’t experienced it. There’s a tightness that comes to it. I tried to get that across in the book, when Ari describes how different pronouns feel, they just don’t feel right, they feel tight, and they feel itchy, and they just don’t feel good to them in that moment.
Because they’ve been trained to feel that way – by credulous fools like Katherine Nonbinary.
To hear people use they/them for me, despite the octave of my voice, and the length of my hair, feels like someone is really seeing me and understands me, and respects me in a way that I didn’t realize I needed before I started using “them,” which was about three or four years ago now. It’s a very welcoming feeling, it releases this anxiety, and it allows people to be the most creative, productive and mentally well that they can be.
Great, now imagine how creative and productive they could be if we called them Your Royal Highness.
TIME includes suicide information at the end of the piece.
H/t GW
Words are meaningless now. Syndromes and problems are random. I mean, a 450 pound woman who breathes hard as she totters down the runway as a spokesmodel for “body positivity” announced that she suffers from…Anorexia.
Bloggers I otherwise enjoy are 110% in on this. Mano Singham, who claims to be all about the “science”, has TWO articles pro-trans on his feed right now. I feel a bit lost politically. I do not want to be on the same side as the fundies and arch right nuts.
You’re right I haven’t experienced it, and I hope not to train myself to experience it, too. I bet it feels just like how some Muslims (have been trained to feel) when somebody draws a cartoon of Muhammad, or burns a Koran.
Does she hang around, waiting for someone to refer to her in the third person? Imagine how much more productive she’d be if she didn’t waste her time like this, getting hung up about policing the language use of other people.
Rare moment of honesty. I didn’t realize I needed…until…the need was created. Until I insisted. Why didn’t she know she needed these pronouns? Because she didn’t need them. It is a need created by media hype, trans activists, and societal contagion.
What is this need? Not the need to be non-binary; we are all pretty much that, if you talk about gender stereotypes (and in spite of all their denial, that is exactly what they are talking about). The need is to be special, to be noticed, to have everyone else paying attention to her, catering to her fragility, taking care of her “need”.
Pronouns not only are not part of a full identity (I ignore any pronouns in reference to me except I or you, because with the other ones, they are not talking to me, but about me, and I am usually not there.) They are not part of a full identity, and they are not part of you. They are not yours. They belong to the user. My name isn’t that much a part of my identity; it is used by others to identify who I am. I don’t refer to myself that way unless identifying for another person. If my name (the noun) is not a part of my full identity, then the substitute for my name (the pronoun) is not, either.
I feel sorry for people who have such a fragile sense of self that they must be constantly humored. In the case of this woman, though, I feel angry because she is passing her fragility and her need for special treatment on to children too young to evaluate the bullshit claims and too young to easily reject a message coming from an adult presented as an authority. Sex education needs to be taught at a young age, with age appropriate teaching each year; if we did that right, maybe the gender ideologists would have learned what sex is, what gender is, and which one is a social construct. Not to mention, if it is done right, maybe they would realize feeling “right” with your body is more the exception than the rule in youngsters, and would realize they aren’t really that damn special. they’re just people, like all the rest of us.
Uncle/aunt, niece/nephew, those are hard words to get around.
That’s how I feel when I’m wearing a wool sweater. Then I break out in a rash. Ari is appropriating my allergies.
Kids are more likely to “understand” that if you put a dress on a Ken doll he becomes a girl. Children are notoriously sexist in that they learn what they think are rules about what the sexes can and can’t do and apply them strictly.
I read one of those “gender guides” aimed at the elementary grades — with the teacher’s notes — and the first few lessons were exemplary basic feminism. Boys can play with dolls and they’re still boys; girls can roughhouse and they’re still girls. Reject gender roles and assumptions! Teachers were warned how children are already prejudiced and judgmental about what makes a real girl or real boy. Let’s help them to be free to be themselves!
Then it took a sudden swing to “gender identity” and now kids were pure, uncontaminated, and completely trustworthy in knowing whether they’re a boy, girl, both, or neither. It’s not at all about stereotypes they’ve picked up culturally. It’s about knowing who you are, absent any of that. Let’s help them be free to be themselves!
If they do the first part, they’ve taken care to distance Gender Identity Theory from children being so rigid when it comes to sex and gender.
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I’ve been “misgendered”, both online and in real life. Somehow I survived. But this was in the 1990s when people hadn’t yet lost their damned minds over this identity stuff.
Since I have a somewhat deeper voice and an ambiguous first name, I have been misgendered on the phone, online, and through the mail. Never face to face, because my form is unmistakably that of a female, even though I tend to wear shirts a size or two larger than my size to de-emphasize. I usually find it amusing when they call me Mr. or sir, unless I am in a really bad mood. Even then, it does not make me suicidal, just snarly.
As someone whose name sounds feminine to many non-Norwegians, I am often mistaken for a woman online, and it hasn’t caused me any pain what so ever. That’s not “misgendering”, though. That’s mistaking a person’s sex. As I have previously mentioned, I have also been referred to as both “man” and “him” by “trans allies”, which in Genderspeak amounts to a claim about what’s going on inside other people’s heads, so that would be an example of “misgendering”. It still didn’t hurt, but I can’t say I appreciate having all kinds of thoughts or feelings or personality traits falsely attributed to me in this way. As I keep saying, this is why any “gendering” what so ever is misgendering in my case, and, I would be surprised if the same weren’t true of most of the people commenting on this blog.
People – including (perhaps especially) the gender-compromised – frequently assume my sex online, correctly and incorrectly in about equal proportion.
People – only the gender wizards this time – also frequently assume my opinions, beliefs and intentions online.
One of those, I shrug off without a second thought, one makes me feel murderous. I’ll leave you to guess which is which.